1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a stacked-type piezoelectric device, that has high quality and can be efficiently produced, and to a production method.
2. Description of Related Art
To produce a stacked-type piezoelectric device, a conventional method includes the production of an intermediate stacked body by alternately stacking ceramic raw material layers and electrode material layers and firing the intermediate stacked body, for example. Thereafter, to complete the stacked-type piezoelectric device by bonding a pair of external electrodes to outer surface of this ceramic stacked body, it has been necessary to polish the outer peripheral surface of the ceramic stacked body (see, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-197998, for example). One of the objects of polishing the outer peripheral surface of the fired ceramic stacked body is to remove fired residues of the electrode raw material adhering to the outer peripheral surface of the ceramic layer and fired residues of the ceramic raw material adhering to the outer peripheral surface of the internal electrode layer, because electrode material and other materials adhering to the outer peripheral surface of the ceramic layer can cause an electrical inner leak of the stacked piezoelectric device and the ceramic material adhering to the outer peripheral surface of the internal electrode layer can cause an electrical connection defect between the external electrode and the internal electrode layer.
However, the prior art stacked-type piezoelectric device and the production method described above involve the following problems. For example, when the outer peripheral surface of the ceramic stacked body is mechanically polished after firing, micro-cracks and other defects can occur on the outer peripheral surface of the ceramic stacked body to lower quality of the ceramic stacked body, so that performance, durability and other properties of the stacked-type piezoelectric device produced by using this ceramic stacked body are likely to remarkably drop. On the other hand, when the machining speed is set to a sufficiently low rate, the occurrence of the micro-cracks can be suppressed but in this case, it is difficult to improve production efficiency.